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Comment by zucked | Hacker News Reader

I think most people operate under the presumption that both parties are acting in good faith. Obviously, there are instances where that isn't true. Choppy economic conditions lead to both sides of the table bending or even breaking norms.

I tend to put stock in giving two weeks of notice as I think it's polite. That being said, I've never had the rug pulled on me, either.

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Companies never give anyone 2 weeks notice. They do not deserve it, and no one should give it, unless they have passion about the team and project they are leaving, and even then they should just wrap that up before giving notice.

Most large companies that do layoffs give over a month of notice+severance. Perhaps they're not required to, but to be given less than a 2 week heads up with no severance is pretty rare.

How large? I don't think Allstate does this and they're Fortune 100. There were layoffs/a reorg back in 2018 in at least Allstate Benefits division but I don't think anyone got severance. I think everyone with more than X years of service was automatically not considered for severance. I know there are many former coworkers who are still there who certainly aren't still there because of their talent. Age is the only factor that comes to mind.

That's just... Not even remotely true in my neck of the woods.

Everywhere I worked at:

- if individual is not performing, people spend months trying to help them gear up before even considering laying them off

- if large layoffs are happening, there's time and severance. Even the ones we see in the news and perceived as sudden and unfair, the notification may be unexpected, but you're rarely laid off effective tomorrow.

Wrong on the large layoffs point. Plenty of them occurred with no warning this year. And often with little to no justification, not only to the individuals let go but even simply from a business rationale.

Them:

> in my neck of the woods.

> Everywhere I worked at

You:

> Wrong

How can you tell them they are wrong in _their_ experiences?

Because their experiences are not reflective of larger industry trends.

They didn't claim their experience was universal. They explicitly qualified their statement. So, you said they were wrong in _their_ experiences, which is calling them a liar and a bad interaction overall. If you'd simply replied that their experience perhaps wasn't indicative of the industry as a whole, _then_ you would have contributed something meaningful to the conversation.

There's one's own experience, and then there's empirical data. Your comment isn't adding any value to this discussion because it's just one in a sea of hundreds of millions.

Hell what about that mortgage company where people found out they were laid off because they couldn't log in to their fucking laptops?

Mortgage company? Shit, that's how some people at Google found out they were laid off.

Meta's layoffs: 16 weeks severance + 2 weeks per year employed. https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-mes...

Google's layoffs: 16 weeks severance + 2 weeks per year employed + accelerate 16 weeks GSU vesting. https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/january-update...

Amazon retail workers: 60 days of employment in which they aren't expected to come to work. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/google-amazon-microsoft-meta...

Etc. The idea that companies would "never give anyone 2 weeks notice" is deeply unconnected from reality.

I'm not sure that's the norm though. FAANG is typically outlier for X Y Z... I would guess that something like 90% of companies don't do severance. Hell, 16 weeks plus 2 weeks per year of tenure is GENEROUS. I'm honestly not sure why they are doing that, unless it isn't voluntary (e.g. some law in CA).

The idea that companies would never give anyone 2 weeks notice is probably closer to reality than the inverse of that assertion.

WARN requires certain employers in most circumstances to give 60 days notice or pay at least 60 days of severance when laying off

> Hell, 16 weeks plus 2 weeks per year of tenure is GENEROUS.

You call it generous, Germany calls it the law (depending on tenure, with some other European countries having a similar timeframe), and somehow non-FAANG non-tech companies are also able to stomach it. This is obviously very influenced by a very high demand for stability in Germany, but I also find it crazy how little people in other countries expect from their employers.

I’ve thought about moving to Germany. I know “the grass is always greener” but god damn is it true you guys can have a 4-day workweek, you just get paid 20% less?

Very much depends on the employer still (and there are quite a few political debates ongoing on whether 4 day work weeks should be incentivized, or whether they are the worst thing ever).

Anecdotally, for experienced devs, it is something that is commonly demanded and granted. For entry level positions it's quite common, but more and more people are asking for it quite early in their careers (even outside of tech).

I know nothing about Germany, but FWIW several web references suggest that severance pay in Germany is "Standard severance pay in Germany is 50% of one month’s wages for every year of service. This increases to a maximum of 12 months’ salary for employees under 50 years old."

This is significantly less generous than FAANG layoff severances.

I think that FAANG companies are indeed more somewhat generous than the norm. It's just easier to find the details of severance packages for big companies than mid-sized/small, because they're much more reported on.

However, I think you're going WAY too far in the other direction to suggest that "no severance" or "only two weeks of severance" is closer to true than not. I've seen a lot of mid-sized companies give 30 days of severance.

Sometimes the boss gives a wink and a nudge though

It is kind of funny, from the other side of the pond, that as soon as lay offs start, the loose labour protection laws in the US seem to be less cool. I remeber when people complained that the long notice peruods in Europe as such a pain for start-ups and employees alike. See how the perspective changes when your own paycheck is on the line.

On the other hand when you get unemployment in the US you are still taking home more than a European.

On the other, other hand, as a European, your kids don't have to go through active shooter training at or fear to be killed there.

One thing people, and it seems this is a problem among the higher paid HN espcially but not exclusively, is tgat money is not everything. And comparing life quality based on how much money someone has is quite frankly pretty sad. And something the truely rich couldn't care less about.

Oh, and I forgot, us poor underpaid Europeans tend not to have student debt in any shape or form. Also something to consider.

The flak is always thickest when you are over the target.

Next time you leave a job, look closer at the COBRA documents for what it would cost to continue the healthcare. Thankfully, you can roll the dice and opt-in retroactively for a month or so.

As some one in the US, I'd rather have the EU safety nets compared to the US unemployment rate.

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